Video Musics III: Floating Oceans is a 38-minute stop-motion animation video opera based on the works of the early 20th century Irish writer Lord Dunsany, and inspired by the time and dream experiments of the Irish physicist John William Dunne. The piece is dedicated to Flann O’Brien. Video Musics III: Floating Oceans contrasts the vivid dreams of its poet-protagonist with the foreboding routine of pedestrian life. Parts operate under the tow of dream logic. All dialogue and narration are expressed through lyrics and music performed live in front of the projected video. The piece explores non-linear and traditional linear narrative, and uses the musical meters of modern classical, hip-hop, ambient, and psychedelia.

This work is the third in a series of animated video operas by Alexis Gideon. During screenings, the film is accompanied by live musical performance. The live music mirrors the action exactly, and the animated characters’ mouths are perfectly in sync with the sung lyrics. Gideon’s video operas were recently screened/performed alongside work by William Kentridge at the New Museum of Contemporary Art and have also been shown at venues including: The Wexner Center for the Arts, The St Louis International Film Festival, The Confucius Institute at SUNY- Stony Brook, The Baltimore Museum of Art, The Santa Fe Art Institute, Glazart in Paris, and Sudpol in Luzerne, Switzerland.

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As an animator, video artist, composer and performer, Alexis Gideon creates richly textured video operas that give audiences something they have never experienced before. Vibrant animated stories unfold on a large screen as the artist performs his masterfully constructed musical compositions alongside them, with all the lyrics matching the puppet characters’ singing and movement. While the art form itself is innovative, it is Gideon’s unique trans-stylistic visual and sonic language that is most remarkable, and that renders the work at once supremely grounded and utterly magical.

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Kara Crombie

A video artist and photographer working with animation, Crombie refers to the current digital age, in which we interpret, reformulate, and share information as opposed to merely consuming it. She is interested in exploring the ways in which our environments inform our identities and vice versa. Her animated series addresses contemporary American issues in a historic setting; Crombie’s characters are Civil War-era paper dolls, and her landscapes include paintings and YouTube video clips. These seemingly absurd juxtapositions draw parallels between “outdated” racial and gender politics and contemporary attitudes, and leave the interpretation open to the viewer’s personal experiences, as well as his or her anxieties and opinions. Crombie was a former member of Vox Populi and has had solo exhibitions at Fleisher Art Memorial in Philadelphia, as well as group exhibitions at the Philadelphia Art Alliance, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, and elsewhere.

Featuring work from Crombie’s series Suffering Heroes in which a musically gifted slave named Alphabet Soup struggles to make sense of his own internal suffering as he waits to perform for thousands of union soldiers. Following Job in the Old Testament, Alphabet seeks an explanation for suffering that is relevant to his time and culture.

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Jennie Thwing – My Black Hole - 8min 15 sec

Jennie Thwing is an artist and film maker who recently moved to New York City from Philadelphia. She has exhibited in numerous group and solo exhibitions and has upcoming exhibitions at the Arlington Art Center in Arlington Virginia and the Factory Media Center in Ontario. She was recently awarded a two year fellowship from the Center for Emerging Visual Artists and was a 2009 semifinalist for the PEW Foundation grant.

My Black hole is an animated film about the artist’s creative process in the studio. It references personal history, ideology, social context, family mythologies and dreams. It was created at the Millay Artist Colony in August 2013.

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Second Saturday is a monthly performance series that highlights emerging practices in performance and media based arts. Please join us at AUX every second Saturday of the month for performance, film, video, and sound works by national and international emerging and established artists.